That revolution didn’t happen, but still, Italy—birthplace of the Renaissance—had seen better days.

For its 1947 story LIFE sent staff photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt on a tour of the country, and many of his pictures documented scenes of distress, with Italians doing their best to carry on amid bombed out buildings.

But even its those hard times Italy still looked beautiful, and Eisenstaedt even captured livelier scenes, most of which did not make it into the magazine. Eisenstadt photographed a packed La Scala opera house in Milan, American sailors enjoying the Piazza San Marco in Venice, and people at work in pasta factories and Tuscan wineries.

And LIFE’s generally dire account of the Italy did acknowledge that, amid the political unrest and troubling poverty, there were still tourists visiting and good times to be had:

“….with her surging vitality, Italy is showing signs of recovery. In her delightful restaurants the tourist can choose from among countless delicacies, though most Italians still do not get enough to eat. In her factories the production lines are running again….Even among venerable remains of past glory, transformed into modern rubble by the war, scholars are working to change the ruins back to their original state. Slowly, painfully, Italy is trying to rebuild herself.”

Eisenstaedt ranged widely during his tour of Italy, capturing images in Rome, Venice, Siena, Naples, Milan and more, venturing from tony resorts to struggling regions where the difficulties are plain to see. One of the shots that captures the mix well shows children playing amid the ruins of the Theatre of Marcellus, broken and magnificent all at once.

LIFE’s plaintive final note to its story was: “For sensitive people with an abiding lust for life, the Italians’ tragedy today is that they have never learned to govern themselves.”

Young men working in a pasta factory carried rods of pasta to drying rooms, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young men carrying rods of pasta for drying, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Man hanging pasta noodles, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

An Italian boy stood on top of a US Army tank left on the edge of the beach at Salerno, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The La Scala Opera House in Milan was at capacity for a performance conducted by Antonio Pedrotti, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A cellarman at Giannino’s handed a bottle of wine to a waiter; the cellar had about 1,500 different wines and liqueurs. Chianti flasks were in the foreground, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chianti flasks in storeroom of the Baron Ricasoli vineyards in Siena, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men fishing near the bridge in Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The archway was all that remained in 1947 of a block of buildings near the main plaza of an Italian city that was heavily bombed during World War II.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children played among the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. In background, the Palazzo Sermoneta, built atop the centuries-old ruins of Caesar’s Theater of Marcellus in Rome. 1947..

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Naples, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers in an olive grove south of Monopoli took a siesta after lunch under a favorite tree, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shoeshine boys in slum neighborhood near the waterfront in postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A woman carried a tray of dough on her head through street of hilltop town in postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two American sailors in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beside damaged statues of the Monte Cassino Abbey, a lay brother made sketches that were to aid in the restoration process, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women worked at a fabric factory in Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Newsstand, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Customers buying bread in the streets in Naples, Italy, in 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women sewed outside their Trulli homes. Trulli are made from limestone boulders and feature conical or domed roofs. Roofs of Trulli are painted with signs to ward off evil. Italy, 1947.

.Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two women passed by a wayside shrine near Castellamare, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Laundry hanging in main square of Burano, Venice, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of a woman standing near a ruins, Italy, 1947

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Postwar Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People relaxed at a swimming pool in a resort in Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A woman in heeled sandals, Italy, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Eisenstaedt in Postwar Italy (and Yes, That’s Pasta) appeared first on LIFE.

Opening on May 6, 2022, the exhibit celebrates what the Monroes call LIFE’s “stunning affirmation of the humanist notion that the camera’s proper function is to persuade and inform.” Photographs from essays by LIFE icons such as Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl Mydans, and Andreas Feininger will be on display. LIFE photographer Bob Gomel, now 88, will also be in attendance at the opening reception from 5-7pm on Friday, May 6.

LIFE.com recently caught up with the gallerists Sid and Michelle Monroe over email to learn more about their show and their thoughts on LIFE, and, well, life in Santa Fe.

How did you become gallerists? Why did you choose to focus on photojournalism?

We both entered the museum field after college, Michelle with the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Sid with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Michelle was also a working artist and Sid was the director of a SoHo gallery specializing in fine art editions, where the gallery owner was exploring an exhibition with Alfred Eisenstaedt in collaboration with the LIFE Picture Collection. In 1985, we sat down with Alfred Eisenstaedt to discuss the exhibition and, then in our 20s, were were awed and engaged with his stories of an extraordinary life behind the camera.

We understood that we were in the presence of something bigger than we had ever encountered before. The work of Alfred Eisenstaedt is our collective history—we didn’t live this but this is what formed the world we were born into. In the eighties, photography was only beginning to gain a foothold in the fine art market, and most galleries were concentrating on the early “masters” of fine art photography. Eisenstaedt, and in general the field of photojournalism, had not been exhibited in a gallery setting. We believed immediately that a gallery which combined the realms of art, history, and reportage would be unique, and that set us on our course.

Albert Einstein

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Why a LIFE exhibition? Why now?

We had our beginning in New York, and over the course of the 1990s had the extraordinary opportunity to meet, get to know, and work with many of the legendary photographers of LIFE magazine, all in their retirement years. Through countless conversations, we learned how they saw the world and recorded it for the magazine, and more importantly, for history. Their work, and work approach, helped us gain insight into how to view their photographs, decades after they made them. Ever since, we have have worked conscientiously over the past 20 years to establish Monroe Gallery of Photography at the intersection between photojournalism and fine art, showcasing works embedded in our collective consciousness that shape our shared history. The Gallery represents several of the most significant photojournalists up to the present day, but the work of the LIFE photographers has been our foundation.

Mother and child in Hiroshima, Japan, December 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt; The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

What do you wish collectors knew about LIFE? The general public?

The work of the photographers of LIFE magazine came to define the medium of photojournalism, and their photographs recorded history and informed us all for most of the twentieth century. It was long one of the most popular and widely imitated of American magazines, selling millions of copies a week. From its start, LIFE emphasized photography, with gripping, superbly chosen news photographs, amplified by photo features and photo essays on an international range of topics. Its photographers were the elite of their craft and enjoyed worldwide esteem. Published weekly from 1936 to 1972, the work of the photographers of LIFE magazine came to define the medium of photojournalism.

American sprinters Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right), after winning gold and bronze Olympic medals in the 200 meters, respectively, raised their fists in a Black Power salute, Mexico, 1968. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Do you have a favorite piece in the show?

Considering we curated the exhibit from potentially thousands of images, the exhibit itself represents our favorites—with enough left over we could easily do a “part two”!

Who are some of your favorite LIFE photographers? Are there some that may have been overlooked?

That’s a difficult question, as each LIFE photographer had their own individual and particular personality and style. We consider ourselves extraordinarily privileged to have been able to have known, and call friends, so many of these great photographers. To name only a few, Eisenstaedt was by many measures the “Dean” of the LIFE photographers and he taught us how to “see”;  Carl Mydans left a deep impression on us with his humility and intense humanistic dedication; Bill Eppridge was deeply committed to documenting historic and deeply sensitive subjects; and Bob Gomel‘s versatility and ingenuity impresses us to this day. 

John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul Mccartney and Ringo Starr, February 1964.

© Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

And for people who plan to visit the LIFE show in Santa Fe, are there other favorite art spots in the area that you recommend?

Santa Fe is a gem of an art-destination city. There are over 200 galleries showing every possible form of art from ancient Native American art and pottery to cutting edge contemporary art. [We recommend] SITE Santa Fe, a contemporary art space; Institute of American Indian Arts; Museum Hill; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; and Meow Wolf, an ‘immersive art installation’ where visitors enter and discover that nothing is as it seems…

Do you have advice for young photojournalists who might want to display their works in a gallery?

Foremost, understand and dedicate yourself to the profession and its specific ethical requirements. Respect its role as the fourth estate and its check on power. Do the work. The role of photojournalists has perhaps never been as vital and important as it is today.

Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi reading next to a spinning wheel at home. (Photo by Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © DotDash Meredith)

The LIFE Photographers exhibit will be on display at Monroe Gallery from May 6 through June 26, 2022. For hours and location, please consult the gallery’s website.

Jill Golden is the director of the LIFE Picture Collection, an archive of more than 10 million photographs created by—and collected by—LIFE Magazine.

The post LIFE Magazine Show Opens At Monroe Gallery Of Photography appeared first on LIFE.

As she would recount in an extraordinary LIFE story seven years later, it turned out after years of misdiagnosis and confusion that her brief stumble was a symptom of the onset of Parkinson’s disease, against which she would fight with everything she had for nearly two decades until her death at 67. It was, as the introduction to that 1959 article noted, the toughest battle ever faced by a woman who had seen many including literal battles in World War II, during which she served as the first woman accredited to cover the combat zones as a photojournalist.

With photographs by her fellow LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, some of which are seen here, the story offered up the personal reflections of the woman who had taken the image that appeared on the first-ever issue of the magazine.

“When I opened some medical insurance papers one day and learned I had Parkinson’s disease, the name did not frighten me because I did not know what in the world it was,” she wrote, describing how she learned the name that her doctors had kept from her as they prescribed physical therapy for her unlabeled symptoms. “Then slowly a memory came back, of a description Edward Steichen once gave at a photographers’ meeting of the illness of Edward Weston, ‘dean of photographers,’ who was a Parkinsonian. I remembered the break in Steichen’s voice: ‘A terrible disease… you can’t work because you can’t hold things… you grow stiffer each year until you are a walking prison… there is no known cure…'”

The knowledge was, unsurprisingly, devastating to Bourke-White.

But she set her mind to learn what she could, to look for anything she could do for relief. She learned, she wrote, that she was just one of three quarters of a million Americans with the disease “often they appear to be struck down at their peak,” she wrote and that, despite this number and the fact that the symptoms had been observed for thousands of years, nobody knew what caused it or how to stop it. Though Bourke-White was an extreme devotee of her exercise routine and even underwent a then-cutting-edge brain surgery to “deaden permanently” part of her brain, she knew that the operation she’d received had only treated some of her disease and that there was no way to know how the symptoms would progress from there.

Today, more than half a century later, many of the questions that confronted Bourke-White remain frustratingly unresolved for those who receive the same diagnosis she did. Treatment options, however, have advanced significantly since Bourke-White’s time and new advances are offering the hope for something even better.

For one thing, says Dr. Rachel Dolhun, vice president of medical communications at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, a person with Parkinson’s disease in the 1950s had no effective options for medication. The most widely prescribed therapy used today—levodopa, which temporarily addresses some Parkinson’s-related loss of dopamine, a movement-regulating brain chemical—wasn’t discovered until the late 1960s. It is now also understood in a way that it was not a few decades ago that many different brain chemicals and parts of the body are involved in symptoms linked to Parkinson’s, not just dopamine and the brain. In addition, the operation that Bourke-White received to basically destroy part of her brain is largely obsolete today, and a patient who was a candidate for brain surgery now would likely instead receive deep brain stimulation, which uses wires or electrodes to stimulate parts of the brain. (The physical therapy that was prescribed for Bourke-White, however, is one thing that hasn’t changed: exercise remains a key way to address symptoms.)

And Dolhun said that advances in genetic science in the last 20 years or so, by offering new insights into how the disease works, have opened up a new range of research angles and hope for a real cure, rather than just a better way to address the symptoms. For example, experts are excited by the testing of possible therapies that would target a protein called alpha-synuclein. “Right now, because of those understandings, the development pipeline is richer than it’s ever been,” she said.

Technology is also changing what’s possible for researchers and scientists. The Michael J. Fox Foundation is running an online clinical study in which patients can log on and tell researchers about what it’s like to live their experience of Parkinson’s disease, Dolhun said, and devices like wearables and smartphones are providing new ways to track and communicate about the symptoms. For example, whereas it used to be that a doctor might observe a patient’s tremor for 15 minutes at a time every couple of months, now an app or a watch can allow patients to log data that gives researchers a 24/7 look at information about those symptoms.

These new possibilities are particularly important when it comes to Parkinson’s disease, since the experience of what it’s like to live with and fight the symptoms is very individualized. “It’s a different journey for every single person who’s on it,” said Dolhun. “That’s why we need the patient experience to inform us so much, and that’s why it’s so important for patients to be involved directly in research.”

That’s also one reason why the openness of people like Margaret Bourke-White mattered in 1959 and continues to matter today. There can still be a stigma attached to telling others that you are experiencing something that might make them see you as weak or in need of assistance. But if those who have it keep their experiences to themselves, it’s harder for researchers to make progress toward a cure and harder for others with the diagnosis to feel that they’re not alone.

For Bourke-White, as she described for LIFE’s readers, her fight against Parkinson’s was, to the fullest extent possible, a reminder to keep working and enjoying what her body could do for every second possible. Nowadays, she wrote in 1959 after the surgery that helped her do that longer than would otherwise have been possible, “my fingers are more and more often loading my cameras, changing their lenses, and turning their winding buttons as I practice the simple blessed business of living and working again.”

“It’s not uncommon for people to feel shy about sharing their stories,” Dolhun said. “For [Bourke-White] to share her story so publicly I think really speaks volumes. When we see people come forward with their story, it’s not an uncommon thing for them to say, ‘I really wish I had shared it earlier.’ They feel a burden lifted.”

Straining to relearn how to speak distinctly after disease had blurred and weakened her voice, Bourke-White, with another patient, was taught by therapists (rear) to exaggerate lip movements.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crumpling paper into balls, Miss Bourke-White worked to keep fingers from stiffening.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Face intent with effort, Margaret Bourke-White exercised as part of her fight against Parkinson’s disease.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A nurse aided photographer Margaret Bourke-White during a therapy session.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White did the tango during a dance class meant to improve her coordination.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White squeezed a towel.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White with her camera during her later years, when the LIFE staff photographer was struggling with Parkinson’s disease.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White during her Parkinson’s therapy.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A doctor explained an operation, here identifying the brain’s thalamus.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Researching her case, Miss. Bourke-White insisted on learning all details from Dr. Cooper (left) and Dr. Manuel Riklan, interviewed them as though on journalistic assignment. “I realized I had been through one of the greatest adventures of my life,” she explained. “The patient’s world was for me a new world. Experiencing surgery was like going on a new assignment.” She asked if she could watch a similar operation to one she had already had.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White prepared to observe a surgery.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White said, “I reached for his hand quite impulsively, when suddenly it stopped trembling. The balloon’s pressure had reached the right spot in the man’s brain. His once-rigid fingers were now relaxed, his hand steady for the first time in 10 years. Dr. Cooper asked him to make a fist, then open it. The fingers closed and opened easily. ‘God bless you, Dr. Cooper,’ the man said. For me this was a magic moment. I knew that in a few days, after the surgeon had deadened the area located by the balloon, this man would be up and about, his tremors relieved. I never met the man, or heard his name, but I shared with him a miracle.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Proof of progress,” she declared, “is that at long last I again can load my camera.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White at home.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White outside her home with her cats.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Fight: A Legendary LIFE Photographer Battles Parkinson’s, 1959 appeared first on LIFE.

Al Asnis of LIFE’s photo lab happened to be waiting for the train on an El platform when he saw a man “writhing on the sidewalk below,” the magazine reported.

As LIFE described in the April 2, 1956 issue:

While preoccupied passers-by went their way, Asnis took a picture then rushed to offer his assistance just as other help arrived. The man was a 48-year-old letter carrier named Max Urkowitz who, on the way home after his rounds, had fallen, twisting his leg. He said he had heard a sharp-snap and thought the leg was broken. One man, doing a job that no novice should attempt, expertly fashioned a makeshift splint for a broken leg. Arriving after a 90 minute delay caused by the snow, an ambulance attendant admired the splint but had to remove it en route to the hospital so the patient could be examined. Instead of a fracture, it turned out, Urkowitz suffered only a bad sprain.

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blizzard in New York City, Mar. 18-19, 1956.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Vintage Blizzard Photos: New York City, 1956 appeared first on LIFE.

That means there have been plenty of chances for audiences to be reintroduced to Kong.

Case in point: In 1952, LIFE dispatched Alfred Eisenstaedt to photograph a screening of that original 1933 film, images from which can be seen here. The story did not run in the magazine at the time—in fact, no record could be found of why the magazine sent the photographer to that particular event or what editors intended to do with the images. It seems likely, however, that what Eisenstaedt was capturing was a screening from the theatrical reissue of the film that year, which was a prime example of the character’s proven staying power in action.

It was, as TIME described, a hit:

Hollywood, frantically casting about for a movie formula which will bring customers back into the theaters, last week agreed that one studio at least had struck pay dirt. After thriftily digging into its storehouse of possible reissues, RKO dusted off the 19-year-old King Kong, the adventures of a snarling, 50-ft. prehistoric monster who saved RKO from bankruptcy in the thirties and seems destined to gross at least $2,500,000 for his masters in 1952.

As most of Hollywood’s producers watched with envious amazement, crowds in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Indianapolis flocked to see Kong brought back alive from a Pacific island to Manhattan, where he climbs the Empire State Building clutching the beauteous and screaming Fay Wray (now fortyish and retired). There, raging defiantly at his puny pursuers, the monster finally gets shot down by a squadron of ancient biplanes.

That 1952 take was significant (about $22.9 million in 2017 dollars), so it was perhaps no wonder that when the concept got yet another go in 1976, the images Eisenstaedt created in 1952, of a 1933 movie, were used to illustrate TIME’s cover story about the movie.

“[The original] achieved the legendary status of classic kitsch, the charm of which remained undimmed by innumerable el cheapo rip-offs and overexposure on TV. The great monkey has become a pop culture staple in everything from cartoons to ad campaigns,” the story observed.

As that place in pop culture endures, LIFE presents this look back at the staying power of the King Kong iteration that remains the monster’s milestone achievement.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

Photo from a 1952 screening of the 1933 film King Kong.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

The post King Kong: When the Awesome One Showed His Might appeared first on LIFE.

That summer, on a Sunday right around Independence Day, the photographer traveled to Somerset, Wis., where a man named David Breault, owner of the Terrance Nite Club, had turned the nearby Apple River into a gold mine.

On that day, about 200 people had been supplied with inner tubes, on which they floated down the river, drinking beer and, when the current allowed, finding time to steal a kiss. After about 45 minutes, they came to a stopping point, where a Terrance Night Club truck would pick them up and bring them back to the starting point. If they wanted to go again, they could. The club provided the tubes for free, but it was worth the expense: Breault reported to LIFE that his business had multiplied by three since they began doing so.

Though the activity might not seem so unusual to today’s summer celebrants—the “floating party” was essentially a lazy-river amusement park ride created by nature—it’s noteworthy that LIFE’s write-up of the activity expressed surprise and delight at the idea that Breault had “innovated the unique pastime of mass inner-tube floating.”

It wasn’t until 1966 that TIME credited Thailand’s Princess Chumbhot of Nagar Svarga as “inventor of the sport of tubing.” Sports Illustrated, the year before, had provided a little more detail on how it had happened: the princess had brought about 100 tubes to her country estate and invited her friends to join her in riding them down a river, but “when news of the fun got out in a Siamese TV show, people began flocking to southern Nakhon Nay province by the hundreds, hoping to join in.”

Though the princess may well have given inner-tubing international renown as a sport, she must share some credit with David Breault of Wisconsin, an American tubbing pioneer. As these photos make clear,  there’s room enough at the party for everyone.

Toward the end of the two-mile stretch, drifters became jammed up, snagged on reeds, and slipped off tubes.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Floaters made their way to the river, passing by the circular building at the left, which was an outdoor bar built around a tree.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The floaters walked down two long, steep wooden staircases to the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Inexperienced at steering and stopping, couples often got separated and ended up floating beside new acquaintances.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A floating party on the Apple River in Somerset, Wisconsin in 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beer-drinking was the most popular pastime of Apple River’s inner-tube floaters, such as Mr. and Mrs. Bud Klingen of Minneapolis who shared a bottle.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Some took photos despite the risk of getting their camera wet.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Music on the water.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Playing bridge, drifting down the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This pair went aground on a sand bar but didn’t seem to mind.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the end of the run, William J. Braun of St. Paul, Minn. hauled himself out of the water using a rope that spanned the river.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Floaters were taken back to the club by truck, many wanting to go again.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Back on dry land

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post When River Tubing Was A New American Pastime appeared first on LIFE.